Tag Archives: adventure

Now, if you haven’t read my last two blog posts on Budapest, Prague and Vienna, where have you been?! Only joking 🙂 Welcome, and I’m glad you have joined us. Check out my ‘Travel’ tab and you will find the posts there, with an explanation of this little ‘series’ of posts.

So onto today’s instalment! 🙂

Vienna:

Vienna is Austria’s capital city, and is also the country’s largest city. It is located on the east of Austria, along the Danube River.

Vienna has been known as both “The City of Music”, and “The City of Dreams”, due to its cultural legacy of composers and musicians (such as Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Haydn, Mahler and Strauss), but also because of the well known psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud who entered the University of Vienna at the age of 17 (although he was born in the Czech Republic).

I love to travel. I have had the privilege of sampling a taste of a number of different countries including India, USA, Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sicily, the Netherlands, Belgium, Guernsey, and probably other places that have presently slipped my mind. With some of these countries, including Austria, I have only passed through while en route to other places.

However, large parts of the world remain uncharted territory to me including Eastern Europe. So this year, I decided having worked hard, and saved hard, to venture out into this new and exciting and as yet unexplored part of the world for me.

Next month I will be, God-willing, visiting Hungary, The Czech Republic and Austria, and in particular spending time in their capital cities of Budapest, Prague & Vienna.

I have to admit that my knowledge of these countries is at present fairly limited, so I thought it would be a fun thing to do to bring you along on my adventure in preparation for my travels by finding out and sharing an interesting fact about these places each day.

I also realise that many of you are far more proficient ‘globe trotters’ than I am, and that you may have ample experience and knowledge of these countries and capital cities (you may even live in one of these places!), in which case you are more than welcome to be tour guide and share your recommendations, experiences, anecdotes, ‘must see’ places, and places to avoid in the comments below. The more the merrier! 🙂

In the meantime, here is my first discovery:

Budapest:

Budapest is the capital city, and also the most populous city of Hungary, and is also one of the largest cities of the European Union, with a population of over 1.7million people.

Budapest was formed in 1872 or 1873 from the merging of two cities on opposite sides of the River Danube, Buda (the original meaning of which was probably water) and Pest (a Hungarian word meaning furnace, oven or cove – I wonder if this is due to the hot springs?).

Here is a beautiful picture of the Danube river intersecting these two sides of Budapest:

Recently I took a short break to Amsterdam. As I do most of my travelling ‘alone’, I often make use of coach tours, mainly for practical reasons such as saving money and my own personal safety, as I find with coach tours there is less to worry about as transport, accommodation and food is on the whole taken care of. Some people don’t like the idea too much as they perhaps view it as something older people would do – admittedly I do tend to find that I am generally the youngest person on these tours, but that is not always the case. Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter too much to me, as a person’s age does not matter and I like to meet new people of different backgrounds and life experiences, and I do not tend to categorise people as much as I take people as unique individuals, so it works for me. Added to that, you do have the freedom to just ‘do your own thing’.

Travelling this way also has its drawbacks in that I’ve found that I have got used to it as a ‘safe’ way of doing things. I guess I would like to branch out a bit more as a solo traveller, but really I don’t know where to start. I’m hoping that over the course of my blogging adventure, I will be able to discover new and innovative ideas from you and others I come across who are more experienced in travelling.

Anyway, back to the story! 🙂 I took a short break to Amsterdam not long ago. Two full days were spent travelling by coach and by ferry. It was a good opportunity to relax, and get to know other people a bit, and to catch up on some films on my Kindle Fire!

That left less that one full day in Amsterdam. However, I have been there once before, several years ago as a child. This time I was alone as I adventured through Amsterdam on my own as we each dispersed our own way from the coach. I had longed to visit Anne Frank’s house, but unfortunately I didn’t realise that you had to book well in advance in order to be guaranteed entry. Thankfully, I was able to walk the street where she lived, along a canal, hear the nearby church bells ring, and remember the vivid scenes from my childhood/teenage imagination after reading her published diary when I was around twelve or thirteen years old. Amidst the noisy queues of tourists I took a moment to appreciate the many freedoms that I had that day that Anne and so many other victims of the holocaust had snatched away from them.

I also enjoyed a lovely canal boat cruise and tour, similar to the ‘hop on, hop off’ bus tours with audio commentary that there are. It was lovely seeing the city from a watery perspective! There are some beautiful ornate buildings, and of course lots of bridges and lots of bikes!! 🙂

I’m having trouble uploading photos just now, so I will create a subsequent post with photos from Amsterdam…watch this space! 🙂

I believe that for many of us, writing is an expression of our soul. It is also a gift that is not only a means of communication, but of deep and significant connection. When you or I write, and share, we also receive.

This is my first ever day blogging on WordPress. I have blogged occasionally before, some years ago, but for some serendipitous reason unknown to me, I was not able to make the connections of giving and receiving that I seem to have encountered on my first day blogging here.

Perhaps when something is fresh and novel it is easier to be captivated by what we have discovered than when it becomes familiar and commonplace. My first impression of blogging on WordPress is how quickly it facilitates connection, or at least it seems to me that it does.

As human beings making our individual and shared journeys and discoveries through life, we are so much more enriched by what we learn and discover with each other.

I feel as if I have opened a window to a new world, and I can see glimpses of the world that I have never seen before.

‘What a difference a day makes’, say the words of a song…’and the difference is you’.

You, each of you that I have connected with already, in some small way – whether we have read, liked or followed each others posts, enjoyed an as yet unseen part of the world through a photograph, or expressed appreciation in a comment – you have opened up a window to me of a world I had not seen before, and I am grateful. And so I take to flight on this new journey, excited as to what I will find, and what we may share.

As I said, I am new to this world of blogging, and I may make mistakes along the way, so I welcome any advice and input, and look forward to connecting with you all.